


Staned

by Jezunya



Series: The Pepperony100 Challenge [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: #54 - React, Angst, Gen, Obadiah Stane - Freeform, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Post first movie, Present Tense, pepperony100 challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1404952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jezunya/pseuds/Jezunya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony looks at it like it’s something foul and deadly, a murder weapon still smeared with a loved one’s blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staned

The day after the press conference is the hardest, but not for any reason Pepper would have expected.

It comes in the form of a Shield agent breaking through the crowd of reporters camped out on Tony’s front lawn to call on them just a little after ten in the morning. It’s a glorious day outside – one neither of them will see much of, since they’re busy hiding from the press and dodging emails and phone calls from Tony’s business associates all questioning her employer’s sanity with varying levels of histrionics. 

It’s not an agent she’s met before, though she thinks she may have seen him assisting Agent Coulson in the aftermath of the battle two days ago. He’s a tall African American man with the same practiced bland expression of all the agents she’s met, though perhaps even less personality left in his face than Coulson has. Jarvis lets him in at Tony’s nod – which is really more a shrug than an actual acquiescence – and Pepper meets him in the front entry, the still-pajama-clad superhero trailing along a few steps behind her. 

“Ms. Potts, Mr. Stark,” the agent greets them, and then introduces himself as Agent Alderman. He’s here because they’ve finished combing through the wreckage from the arc generator explosion – wreckage like the Iron Monger suit, which was carefully whisked away before the press could get their cameras and their claws on it. He doesn’t actually say that, but they all know he’s not talking about wreckage in terms of bricks and mortar. 

“I was instructed to return this to your custody, as we do not currently have a specific interest in analyzing its technology.” 

Pepper feels Tony tense beside her as Agent Alderman reaches inside his suitcoat and pulls out a fist-sized, cloth-wrapped bundle. She sees the connection cord first, hanging out past the linen handkerchief, and it’s like she’s been punched in the gut before he even unwraps it because she knows what he’s holding and this can’t be good, it can’t be… 

The agent finishes unwrapping the arc generator, retrieved from the fried Iron Monger suit, tucks the handkerchief back inside his coat, and holds the lifeless reactor out to Tony without even the slightest trace of human emotion. 

Tony looks at it like it’s something foul and deadly, a murder weapon still smeared with a loved one’s blood. He looks at it like he’s being handed his own still-beating heart. Pepper’s certain she’s not imagining the greenish cast to his face. 

She takes the arc reactor from the agent, not looking at the way Tony’s eyes remain wide and ever so slightly glazed as she does so. She fumbles for a moment, caught between cradling it – it was his heart, his power, something she put in him with her own two hands – and wanting to touch as little as possible of the backstabbing, traitorous thing. In the end, she just closes her hands around it and cradles it against her stomach, hiding it from view as much as she can as she quietly thanks Agent Alderman, who nods and exits back through the front door. She doesn’t turn until she’s sure Jarvis has locked it behind him. 

When she does, pivoting slowly on the toes of her Louboutins, she’s already drawing a breath to ask what she should do with it, but Tony speaks before she can. 

“Destroy it.” He doesn’t look at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallows, gaze anchored resolutely on the sleek stone slabs of the foyer. His eyes slide closed a moment later, clenching as if in pain. Voice rough, he adds, “ _Please._ ” 

This time, Pepper doesn’t hesitate to do as he asks. She also doesn’t resist the urge to scrub her hands clean afterwards.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me [on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
